A middle-order batsman, Gerry Tordoff was an old-fashioned amateur sportsman in the 1950s, an era when they were fast dying out. He made his Somerset debut in 1950 as a 20-year-old appearing spasmodically while at university. His only year in the Cambridge side was 1952 when he won his Blue in a rain-blighted drawn Varsity match - earlier that season he had also won a football Blue as a left-back. He played the remainder of the 1952 summer for Somerset, passing 1000 runs, but joined the Royal Navy that autumn and thereafter turned out rarely for the county. In 1954 he made the highest of his five hundreds, 156 for Combined Services against the Pakistanis. In 1955 Somerset were in need of an amateur captain - a professional skipper was a year off - and the navy released him to fulfill the role. He made 1196 runs but was unable to lift the county off the bottom of the table, a position they had occupied for three summers, although he engineered four wins, double the best in any of those campaigns. He did not play for the county again after that summer - he received a commission - but appeared regularly for Combined Services and also represented Berkshire. Martin Williamson

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